Tag Archives: Branding

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Millions Of Toyota Customers Possibly Affected By Data Breach

In recent months, Japan is a nation under cyber-siege, with several high-profile attacks having been made against the country.  The most recent attack targeted Toyota.  If you own a Toyota or Lexus, it’s possible that at least some of the information you gave to the company has been compromised.

Although an investigation into the matter is ongoing, Toyota wasted no time letting its massive customer base know.

Their official statement reads in part, as follows:

“We have not confirmed the fact that customer information has been leaked at this time, but we will continue to conduct detailed surveys, placing top priority on customer safety and security.”

Later in the statement the company stressed that if customer information was, in fact compromised, that information did not contain credit card or other payment numbers.

Early indications point to a well-organized hacking group calling themselves the OceanLotus Group. Although even this cannot be confirmed at this point.

The details surrounding the attack are murky at this point. What we do know with certainty is that on March 21st, the company detected an unauthorized intrusion into its corporate networks across a staggering 8 company divisions, marking it as an extremely well organized and sophisticated attack.

Considering the other attacks made against Japanese companies and government agencies, it seems that for reasons that are not yet clear, one or more big hacker organizations filled with top-tier talent has decided to put the nation under the virtual gun.

Only time will tell exactly who’s behind the attacks and what their ultimate purpose might be. For now, the key thing to know is that if you own a Toyota or Lexus, it’s possible that at least some of your personally identifiable information was compromised.  Be on the lookout for additional information from Toyota as it becomes available.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Several Popular Restaurants Had Credit Cards Stolen

If you frequent any of the following restaurants and paid them a visit between May 23, 2018 through March 18, 2019, your credit card data may have been compromised.

The parent company of these chains, Earl Enterprise, recently announced that an unspecified number of store locations were found to have been infected by PoS malware.

When taken together, they managed to harvest more than two million credit card numbers nationwide.  These were later found for sale on the Dark Web.

The list of restaurants includes:

  • Chicken Guy!
  • Mixology
  • Tequila Taqueria
  • Earl of Sandwich
  • Planet Hollywood
  • Buca di Beppo

If you’ve been to any of the restaurants named above in that range of time, you may have already received a notification from the company.  If you want to confirm whether the location near you was one that was compromised, Earl Enterprise has a lookup tool on their website allowing you to drill down and find out definitively.

The company was made aware of the issue in late February when they were contacted by private security researcher Brian Krebs. He discovered a large cache of credit card numbers on the Dark Web that belonged to the company’s customers.

Once they were informed, they launched their own internal investigation, duly notified law enforcement, and brought in a third-party firm to assist them with the investigation.  Upon confirming Krebs’ findings, they made a public announcement to their customers.

Exercising an abundance of caution, Earl Enterprise is encouraging all its customers to keep a watchful eye on their credit and debit card statements and to stay alert for any suspicious activity. If you notice any, report it to the company that issued your credit card immediately.  If you see something and don’t report it right away, you may wind up having to pay for charges you didn’t make.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

New Phishing Attack Targets Amex And Netflix Users

If you do business with either American Express (AMEX) or Netflix, be on the alert.  Windows Defender Security Intel has recently reported the detection of two major new phishing-style campaigns aimed at the customers of both businesses.

Recipients have been receiving emails that appear identical to official Netflix and American Express communications.

In both cases, the ultimate goal is to convince customers to hand over their credit or debit card information. Microsoft has sent a couple of different tweets out about the issue.  One of them assures customers that “Machine learning and detonation-based protections in Office 365 ATP protect customers against both campaigns.”

And another warned that “The Netflix campaign lures recipients into giving away credit card and SSN info using a ‘Your account is on hold’ email and a well-crafted payment form attached to the email.”

The unfortunate truth is that emails like the ones currently in play are extremely easy to craft and very compelling.  The hackers simply play on the fears of the customer, making it sound as though if they don’t take immediate action they’ll lose access to a valued service they’ve come to rely on.

There’s essentially no cost to the hacker for pushing out hundreds, or even thousands of emails like the ones currently being used. For each victim that falls prey to the tactic, the costs can be enormous.

As ever, the first best line of defense is education and awareness.  In addition to that, if there’s ever any question at all about the status of your account, the best thing you can do is to address the issue via another channel.

In other words, don’t simply reply to the email you received.  Open a new tab, look up the company’s customer support number and call to verify.  Doing so will tell you in short order whether the email you received was legitimate, or someone trying to separate you from your hard-earned money.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

MySpace Permanently Lost Large Amounts Of User Data

Are you or were you a MySpace user?  If so, we have bad news.

The struggling company recently announced that when they attempted to migrate all user data to new servers, something in the process went wrong.

As a result, massive amounts of user data was lost.

The only way to describe the loss is catastrophic, with the company reporting that most user-uploaded videos, songs and photos added to the site between 2003 and 2015 are gone with no hope of recovery.  More than a decade’s worth of content, gone in the blink of an eye.

The company’s official announcement reads as follows:

“As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from MySpace.  We apologize for the inconvenience.  If you would like more information, please contact our Data Protection officer.”

That’s it. Even worse, the migration happened more than a year ago, in February 2018.  At that time, users took to Reddit to complain about not being able to access content that was more than three years old.  Eventually, the level of complaints grew to the point that the company could no longer ignore it and finally came clean.

IT managers and business owners should take notes on this incident.  This is possibly one of the worst handlings of a data loss incident we’ve seen in recent history.  Not only was the company completely uncommunicative for more than a year, when they did finally make an announcement, it was terse.

Describing that level of data loss as an ‘inconvenience’ is not just insensitive, it’s bad business.  If the company was struggling before, that goes double now and worst of all, it was, from start to finish an entirely self-inflicted wound.

In any case, if you are, or were a MySpace user at some point, most of your older data is probably gone forever.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Recent Breach Targeted MyPillow And Amerisleep Customer Data

If you’ve purchased bedding from either MyPillow or Amerisleep, your data may have been compromised. These companies are two popular mattress and bedding merchants operating in the US. This is according to a recent report coming to us from RiskIQ. The hacking group Magecart appears to be behind both breaches, which is bad news for both companies and their customers.

That is because Magecart is one of the most talented and active hacker groups on the scene today, having launched a number of successful attacks against high profile targets that have included Ticketmaster, Feedify, Shopper Approved, Newegg, and British Airways.

MyPillow entered into Magecart’s crosshairs in October 2018, when the group compromised MyPillow’s e-commerce and sales platform and began skimming credit card information submitted by the company’s customers. The group also registered a similar domain, mypiltow.com and utilized ‘Let’s Encrypt’ to implement an SSL certificate.  Unsuspecting visitors to the site had no idea they were on a domain controlled by the hacking group.

According to RiskIQ researcher Yonathan Klijnsma, “…this type of domain registration typosquatting means that the attackers had already breached MyPillow and started setting up infrastructure in its name.”

Within a month’s time, the hacking group moved onto the second phase of its attack, registering a new website called livechatinc.org, which mimicked the Live chat used by MyPillow.  With a poisoned script already running inside the company’s infrastructure, Magecart was able to mimic the genuine tag used by the live support service. This was so that by all outward appearances, customers believed they were chatting with an actual MyPillow employee.

The attack on AmeriSleep dates back a bit further to April 2017, but followed a similar pattern.  The skimmer remained in operation between April through October of 2017.  The company rid themselves of Magecart’s malicious software, only to come under attack again in December 2017.

In both cases, the skimmer domains have been taken offline, but both companies are still dealing with the malicious code injection issues. RiskIQ notes that given Magecart’s history, even when both companies clear their servers of malicious code, they’re likely to be re-infected in short order.  Watch your credit card statements if you’ve made a purchase from either company.

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